Christy Clark’s air travel fell within guidelines authorizing the use of charter aircraft in cases where there is no scheduled air service...more

Christy Clark’s air travel fell within guidelines authorizing the use of charter aircraft in cases where there is no scheduled air service available or the charter is economical compared to scheduled air service, said Finance Minister Mike de Jong.

VICTORIA — Opposition leader John Horgan launched question period in the legislature Monday with “a fairly graphic example” of the contradictory spending choices made by the B.C. Liberals on the transportation front.

The government has taken a hard line on transportation allowances for folks with disabilities. Yet there is an apparently lax attitude toward the chartering of private jets by Premier Christy Clark.

“Could the minister for social development explain why it’s OK for the premier to find the highest-priced option and it’s OK for you and your government to take away the most basic of options for transportation for people with disabilities?”

Answering for the government was cabinet minister Michelle Stilwell, who has been under fire since budget day over the more stingy aspects of changes in financial assistance for the disabled.

The Liberals announced a $77-a-month increase in the disability allowance. But they netted the increase down to $25 for recipients getting a government-funded bus pass, and to $11 for others getting a different transportation allowance.

Not surprisingly, the disabled and their advocates saw this as government giving with one hand and taking with the other. But any suggestion of a clawback generates outrage on the government side.

“Much as they continue to say it over and over again, it doesn’t make it right,” Stilwell fired back Monday. “The subsidized bus pass program is still available to those individuals with disabilities. They can have it, and they will receive a $25 rate increase.”

Still, I bet if the Liberals had it to do over again, they would have announced the changes regarding the transportation allowance back in January, putting the budget day focus on the across-the-board increase for everyone.

But for now — being unwilling to swallow the cost of making good on the transportation allowances — they’ve stuck to the notion that they were simply trying to provide fairness, and equity and choice to the disabled.

“The member opposite seems offended that we would actually provide choice to people with disabilities, as if they’re not able to make choices for themselves,” continued Stilwell, falling into the mistake of relaying Horgan’s words back to him.

“What’s the choice?” returned the leader of the Opposition. “The choice is to stay home. Or do I get a bus pass? Or do I buy food?” Besides there was the larger issue: “Why is it OK for the premier and her entourage to get private flights wherever they want to go, and it’s not good enough to give a basic bus pass to the most vulnerable people in our community? Why that choice?”

Stilwell didn’t try to answer for the premier and with Clark absent from the house, neither did anyone else on the government side. But outside, Finance Minister Mike de Jong took a stab at providing some perspective on the premier’s high-flying ways.

“The premier doesn’t travel alone and she does have a security detail,” he told reporters. “She does take an assistant with her, generally a press secretary to deal with the media so there is a group of people that by necessity travels with the premier. Depending on where she is going there can or cannot be a flight and sometimes the schedule changes very quickly.”

He also noted the reasons for her wide-ranging travel between Vancouver, where she lives with her son, Kelowna, which she represents in the provincial legislature, and the provincial capital and other parts of the province.

“Much of the work of government obviously takes place, the legislative work takes place here in Victoria. The premier has an office in Vancouver … She wants to have a presence and people in her riding expect her to have a presence in her constituency so she will travel back and forth … She is a premier who wants to be out there. She wants to … reach out beyond Victoria and Vancouver and her own constituency so you see that reflected.”

Nevertheless, de Jong maintained that Clark’s travel fell within guidelines authorizing the use of charter aircraft in cases where there is no scheduled air service available to meet the timing and duration of the trip and/or the charter is economical compared to scheduled air service given the number of people travelling at public expense.

He also maintained that a full analysis would show that the current premier’s spending on getting around B.C. was “in line with what has taken place over the last 20 years.”

About which more Tuesday, presumably, as Clark is scheduled to make an appearance at the legislature.

But having delivered preliminary defence of the boss, the finance minister then conceded the need for fuller and more disclosure of travel spending by Clark and her ministers.

“We have already been working on that,” said the minister, acknowledging that the details of Clark’s travel emerged only through an access to information request, as opposed to routine disclosure. “We do so now, happily in my view, as it relates to travel that MLAs incur and are in the midst of finalizing a process by which we can do the same for the executive branch.”

As with the disability allowance, the Liberals are realizing that if they’d been up front ahead of time, they might not be in such a scramble to cover their tracks.